


Three Point Six Million Light Years From Home (Have A Beer Before You Go)

by soleta



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-02-01
Updated: 2006-02-01
Packaged: 2017-10-16 20:14:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,164
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/168924
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soleta/pseuds/soleta
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>zomgangst. or: <i>John will never let anyone call him a hero; instead, he will pull up Brendan Gall's personnel file, and Aiden Ford's, and Peter Grodin's.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Three Point Six Million Light Years From Home (Have A Beer Before You Go)

At first, just being there is enough. He'd sat down the second day he was on base and done the figures on a sheet of paper, and with every new number his smile grew, just a little bit.

They're _34 sextillion_ miles from home, give or 60 quintillion miles or so.

John leans back, puts his feet up on the desk, and stares at the paper for a moment.

3.6 million light years. 34,057,902,184,716,120,064,000 miles. It works out to a 1,079,968,993,680,749 year walk, more or less.

He feels like part of him has been left on Earth, that he is stretched through space-time and wormholes, tied to a planet that would never be home again. He would like to think that his issues and fears were the things that were left behind, but that's optimism and it has no place in John Sheppard's soul.

The Gate is an anchor to everything he wants to forget - but that's something they all have in common here.

* * *

John's so hugely thrilled about his promotion that he manages to forget what it means until they get back to Atlantis. He's responsible for every person they lose, now; before it was still Colonel Sumner's command, in the SGC's eyes, ultimately it was _not his fault_ ; he could cling to that idea and most of the nightmares lacked the edge of true guilt. If he'd been smarter, faster, stronger, _better_ -

He takes every opportunity he can find during their downtime to prove to himself that he's not superhuman; stick fighting with Teyla and arm wrestling with Ronon, six-on-one fight training with the biggest Marines Atlantis has, but he still lies awake at nights with the list of the dead scrolling past his eyes. His subconscious won't take a hint.

One day he casually mentions to Elizabeth that the control tower would be _perfect_ for base jumping. It takes a minute before her odd look registers, and when it does it baffles him until she reminds him of something he said six months before, that pilots with any sense fly their planes, they don't jump out of them.

John shrugs it off, as casually as he knows how, and for hours he thinks with huge, overwhelming relief that he's gotten away with it until Dr. Heightmeyer sits down at his table while he's sneaking a quick lunch between meetings.

* * *

They send him back to Earth for three weeks of leave. He tries to make the best of it and plans long, detailed days of fast food, movie marathons, and beer - God, _beer_ , John thinks dreamily. They'd done their best, but none of the Pegasus cultures they've met so far have had a tradition of brewing alcohol from grain, and the Athosian alcohol isn't worth thinking about.

The lab geeks had passed around a petition to import some of the Earth grains to Atlantis, citing the (negligible) vitamin deficiencies Beckett was worried about. John had never seen a petition fill up so fast, but it was all for nothing; the biologists went to Elizabeth and told her horror stories about Earth bacteria and bugs, viruses gone out of control, and she put her foot down.

The biology lab had mysteriously become the lowest on the list of repair priorities.

In the end, General O'Neill corners him and takes him to a tiny cabin in the woods, high, high in the Rockies stocked to the rafters with food and a hang glider, tells him firmly not to get himself killed because the property isn't insured, and leaves him there.

John spends the first day bored out of his mind, the second day investigating the cabin, and days three through twenty exploring the woods on foot and in the air. The air's unbelievable, clean and clear and fresh with the smell of a thousand trees coming into bloom while ice is still fresh on the ground. He'd never been to the Rockies before Atlantis, and the idea of exploring new terrain into what had abruptly become his backyard is almost laughable, but - that's how he feels, like El Dorado could be just around the corner, like Columbus, like Lewis, like Clark.

On day ten, he sees a condor flying high on an air draft, and he stops short, nearly walking into a tree, and stares. He's abruptly reminded of the first time he'd flown solo, his wits and reflexes and his grip on the controls battling gravity, wind, and the inimical whimsies of Mother Nature, who liked her children to keep their feet firmly on the ground. It's something he misses about the puddlejumpers; on the one hand, they go eighteen million miles an hour, they cloak, and they damn well _read his mind_. On the other hand, while Rodney is living proof that they can't fly themselves, to someone who's used to Black Hawks and F-14s they might as well come with an autopilot and a snack machine.

Not that John would trade them for anything up to and including a ZPM. He's just - conscious of their limitations.

The condor is gone. John starts walking again, going nowhere in particular, walking just to move.

From puddlejumpers his mind jumps to Brendan Gall. Two weeks after they came back, John had gotten Rodney drunk with the specific intention of learning what had happened that day after he had left to fight the Wraith. Afterwards, he'd wished he hadn't, because Rodney had described the gunshot and what Rodney saw when he turned around in perfect, excruciating detail.

John will never let anyone call him a hero; instead, he will pull up Brendan Gall's personnel file, and Aiden Ford's, and Peter Grodin's.

He stops in front of a tree, one of the pale barkless ones, and pulls out his pocketknife. It's the work of a moment to carve the easy part.

  
_Brendan Gall  
1979-2005_   


John weighs different quotes in his head; he wants it right. He needs it to be right. Gall probably won't haunt him if he screws it up, but this is - this is important.

After a moment, he finishes the inscription and stands back to read it again.

  
_Brendan Gall  
1979-2005  
I shall fear no evil, for thou art with me_   


He has a horrible feeling that he's misremembered the quote.

It doesn't matter, though. John remembers Gall's poker shark skills, and Abramson's sister, and Colonel Everett's dedication to his best friend. Bates' little brother. Grodin's courage. Ford's good nature.

He would never forget, and that was a start. He would make Atlantis their memorial, John thinks suddenly, fiercely; the thing they died for. He would make sure nobody would ever forget what they died for, and what they had lived for.

He turns around to go back to the cabin and call for a helicopter pickup, and on the way, he spots the condor again, soaring high against a cloudless sky. John grins. It feels like a good omen.


End file.
